The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 32

Lucie Neville HOLLYWOOD THE bravest women in the movies don't mind saying they're afraid of some things. They aren't scared of parachute jumps, fighting sharks or smashing cars. These are their job. Their private phobias are traditionally feminine ones mice and snakes, and the best stunt girls in the business shriek at them as shrilly as any glamor queen. This Victorian weakness might amaze casting directors, who seem to think stunt girls are indestructible.

It might surprise equally mouse-fearing actresses, who regard doubles as necessary nonentities. Actually, Hollywood knows little about their personal lives or likes; they're rarely in the gossip columns and their clique is as close as a magicians' society. But the 15 or 20 women in the neck-risking business aren't strong, silent and impassive. The majority of them are little tricks of five feet, one or two inches only one stunter in the group is five feel, seven inches. All of them are young, plenty of them pretty, most of them married to studio technicians, actors or stunt men.

They wear baby blue ribbons in their hair when they wrestle lions; careful makeup covers scars left by flying glass and breakaway furniture. As fond mamas, they obligingly take their youngsters to amusement parks and ride the roller coasters with them. CTUDIOS don't suspect the double-trouble girls of such feminine traits much less of mouse-phobia because they are so assured and so completely dependable in their work. Frances Miles, one of the best all-round stunters, said, "You've got to be dependable, because it's your neck, and you put your own price on it. Most of us can do about anything, but personally, I draw the line at snakes." She's the girl whose first stunt was fighting a shark.

Hanging around Universal, where her father was head of studio police, the 16-year-old happily agreed to double for Aileen Sedgwick, leading lady in a Bill Desmond serial. The job was to dive into a nine-foot tank, a knife clenched between her teeth, kill the shark and open the conning tower of a submarine where the hero was trapped. She did it, but she didn't know until after she came out of a faint beside the tank that the shark's jaws had been wired together. Two years of starring in serials ended in marriage and the arrival of Buster, now 1 1 years old. Then back to stunting, leaping from burning balconies, racing cars to the edges of cliffs, driving chariots.

Married now to Duke York, an actor, she often drives their midget car in races and chases for different studios. Doubling for Myrna Loy in the final sequence of "Too Hot to Handle," Miss Miles did what she called an easy fall drvirig headlong down a flight of concrete steps. That was such a cinch that she charged only $35 for the first fall, and $10 each for four more that the director wanted for different camera angles. Hollywood stunt girls think nothing of risking their necks, doubling for high-priced stars. But off the lot they're 'sissies7 like everybody else pOCK-BOTTOM price for stunts is $35 a day, a fee only recently won by a ruling of the Screen Actors' Guild.

Under this price come trick and bronc riding, net and plain falls, handling wild animals, general rough stuff and diving. Above 25 feet, the diving price rises correspondingly. The minimum for an auto skid is $75, $50 for a crash, $100 for a turnover, and $100 for being a standing target. Transfers from autos, trains and planes vary from $50 to $250 and up. Ordinary riding is $1 1 a day, the same wage a stock contract player gets.

Chases on horseback are listed at $16.50 a day, poor pay in comparison to the $15 a dress extra gets for sitting around, especially since the centauresses furnish their own saddles and a variety of riding costumes. Special stunts bring special prices, arranged beforehand between the neck-risker and the studio business manager. At that, it isn't a big-money profession. year, with several super-pictures, was a fairly good one for the movie tomboys but even as good a one as Miss Miles averaged only $50 a week. No American insurance company will take a stunter; Lloyd's of London will, at premiums few can afford.

Compensation for injury during studio work is $25 a week, with hospital and doctor bills paid, but there is no allowanre for such a calamity as Miss Miles' recent three-moDtli layoff for treatment of an old injury. It is to establish a fund for similar emergencies that she and other stunt women hope to reorganize the Riding and Stunt Girls' Association, founded last year. That, and better to acquaint directors with their various specialties When the handsome hero gallops up to snatch the heroine from the brink of danger, it's a sure bet that a stunt girl does the real trick, lone Reed, one of movieland's most daring, demonstrates how it is done in a western and to rotate jobs more evenly. The first club disbanded after some dissension in the ranks, due to ex-stunt queens who had been working only as extras for years wanting to leap off cliffs again instead of being honorary members. They took in a lot of circus tumblers, riders and snake charmers, too, it seems, who couldn't qualify strictly as stunters.

"Maybe they weren't afraid of snakes," Miss Miles said scornfully, "but they couldn't do the stuff Jeanne Criswell does, and she's scared of mice I've seen her climb on a couch and grab her skirts and shriek at one; she had the shakes so bad one night when she saw a mouse in my kitchen that she had to go home. "Jeanne's the one who doubled for Jane Wyman in 'Wide Open sliding backward down the half-open Wilmington draw- (Copyrlght, 1939, by Every Wnalt Magazine) 4L Irene Hervey and Ray Milland were in the closeups of this midget car, but Mary Hurley took the bumps in the real chase. bridge in a handcar. Her specialty is standing by a train and letting it just miss her, and she does anything with horses." Another who shuns snakes is Aileen Goodwin, who does practically anything but prefers sidesaddle stunts and net falls droping into space to land in a net, perhaps some 75 feet below. All the difficult riding that Madge Evans did in "Army Girl" was Miss Goodwin's, as well as Claudette Colbert's hard gal-lopings in "Under Two Flags" and Marlene Dietrich's floating-veil rushes in "Garden ol Allah." None of this doubling, naturally, is bally-hooed.

Stars can't lead even stunt-double-lives while movie-makers try to keep fans believing that the heroine is as brave as sh is beautiful. The movie tomboys realize, too, that a glamor- ous neck is much too valuable to risk, especially if an accident to it holds up production for weeks. It would be especially disastrous if small fry knew their western heroes and heroines often can't even ride, let alone do a Russian drag or take a pitfall. But that's bread and butter to a stunt girl. I ONE REED is the stunt woman best known to outsiders because of a recent trip she made to the Ga'lapagos Islands in search of animal gifts for Los Angeles' Zoopark.

A pretty blond who wasn't afraid of peculiar animals was the main requisite no special stunts required and she filled the bill. In shorts and jodhpurs, she posed with boa constrictors, natives, sea elephants, sloths and the expedition's leaders, Publisher George Palmer Putnam and Director Tay Garnett. Resulting publicity pictures swamped the papers. Biggest money-maker is Mary Wiggins, acknowledged top girl. She does no riding now, a fairly general accomplishment, but specializes in danger.

Starting as a high-diver through fire rings at Florida water carnivals, she has since doubled for most of the stars. She took the brutal whipping plus some misplaced, painful lashes for Josephine I lulchinson in "Mountain Justice" and accomplished most of Dorothy Lamour's daring in "Spawn of the North." Corinne McAllister was another Laniour double, for the boat sinking scene. Mary I lur-ley did the chiving and riding for Joan Bennett in "The Texans" and the midget auto chase for Irene Hervey in "Siy It in French." Helen Thurston took the football rough-stuff for Joan Davis in "Hold That Co-EVi" fj.